Chinese tourists slowly resuming overseas trips, but Lunar New Year numbers still well down on pre-Covid levels
- More than 2 million foreign trips were made during the Spring Festival holiday, according to the state news agency
- Southeast Asia was the most popular destination this month with low costs and the ease of getting a visa helping to lure visitors
A total of 2.39 million trips were made out of and into China in the first six days of the week-long break, the first since the country lifted its Covid-19 controls, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
The figure marked a 123.9 per cent year-on-year increase compared with last year, but it is still a long way from the 2019 level of over 12 million cross-border trips.
Between January 21 and 26 this year, inbound trips totalled 1.2 million, representing a 127.2 per cent increase from the first six days of the holiday last year, while 1.19 million outbound trips were made, up 120.7 per cent, Xinhua said.
It did not provide statistics on how much Chinese travellers spent on their trips.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, China was the world’s largest source of outbound tourists, who took 170 million trips and contributed US$253 billion to the global economy in 2019.